Disaster recovery now a necessity

If ever there was a time for businesses to stop avoiding disaster recovery, it may be now. Hurricane Sandy proved once again that companies not prepared to protect their most important information are playing a dangerous game. A recent Electric Light & Power report suggested that disaster recovery is no longer simply a desire, but a requirement.

The news source explained that there are many incidents that can disrupt a business. These range from man-made threats like cyberattacks to natural disasters like earthquakes and floods. Gartner Research Director Aman Munglani suggested that enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses are both gravitating toward disaster recovery solutions to protect themselves.

“The fact of the matter is, yes, it is becoming a lot more affordable and manageable and the complexity of disaster recovery solutions has come down enormously in the last few years,” Munglani said, according to the report.

Instead of playing a guessing game when a disaster will strike, companies should begin thinking about what type of disaster recovery solution they can implement to protect themselves against all types of incidents.

Most organizations lack confidence in their disaster recovery
Even though there are many types of disaster recovery options available for companies, some firms still lack confidence in their ability to respond. Quantum surveyed 500 IT decision-makers earlier this year and found that 90 percent said that corporate data is vulnerable if a disaster strikes.

Quantum also found that nearly 30 percent of participants said their businesses have experienced a security breach in the past year, with 15 percent saying these incidents have been caused by natural disasters.

Robert Clark, Quantum’s senior vice president, said the wildfires that struck many parts of the country during the summer are just one type of disaster that companies need to be prepared for. Depending where they are located, businesses also need to be ready for hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and more.

“We’re seeing a strong, sustained interest in the value of deduplicated and replicated disk backup and path-to-tape solutions for a best-practices approach to DR,” Clark said.

A thorough disaster recovery plan should no longer just be a consideration for businesses. Instead of neglecting the fact that natural disasters can strike at any time, firms should have solutions in place to help them protect mission-critical data and access this information following a disruption.

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This online digest is dedicated to exploring BDR solutions and technology relevant to MSPs, VARs, and IT professionals.

The Recovery Zone is brought to you by StorageCraft, which has been producing software solutions for backups, disaster recovery, system migration, virtualization, and data protection solutions for servers, desktops, and laptops since 2003.